Jarring Reality Voices 2023
These are not just stories; they are life experiences, woven with threads of hope, struggle, and crisis, and are written by people broken by the systems that failed them. It is imperative to approach these stories with a lens of kindness and empathy, recognising that behind every word lies a soul bared, a heart exposed. Every tale carries within it the weight of sadness and loss, be it the loss of identity, connection, or belonging. As you delve into these narratives, please truly hear. Acknowledge the courage it takes to speak, the vulnerability it takes to share.
Annabelle Harris
My Life Changing Involvement With Social Care…. Why I chose to take a step to the side? Because my children’s behaviour was too hard to live with, for them and for me? Multiple incidents a day, support network diminishing, [...]
Read MoreFlorence Walker
I am immensely angry and frustrated. Even this afternoon something happened, and I tried to speak to the children’s home manager and again, I am ignored, treated like I am some annoying busybody with snotty bits of kids who have no training, trying to give me half-hearted feedback on my [...]
Read MoreJean Smith
My experience has been horrific. Accused of all sorts by professionals with no understanding of attachment issues. The result is a family torn apart, a child back in care and a broken parent. And still, they don’t listen as I try to hang on keeping a relationship with my child. [...]
Read MoreSally Miller
Our experience! We adopted 2 children, although they are not biologically related. She always had attachment disorders due to early life trauma (a pull/push strategy) and challenging behaviours, we attended Theraplay, therapeutic life story work and she’d recently started EMDR, we also attended many parenting sessions over the years under [...]
Read MoreAlice Lea
For the want of appropriate, timely and professional support (that wasn’t a post adoption social worker coming round to craft or bake for an hour!!) our family broke down. We were left to flounder for months after saying we were desperately in need of more help as a result of [...]
Read MoreLesley Robert
Our family is in crisis, the system is broken, and we need our story to be heard. We’re calling for systematic change in the way children and families are supported through the adoption process and beyond. Two years ago, our family were the faces of a National Campaign to encourage [...]
Read MoreLouise Brooker
Adoption breakdown is not failure to love or try to do your best for the child. Adoption breakdown is not abandonment, lack of parenting skills, or neglect. Adoption breakdown is in the sad reality that many hundreds of families up and down the country face each year due to the [...]
Read MoreRosemarie Lewis
We were misled from the start, a catalogue of errors in the PAR report, a child with FASD, years of asking for help, years of asking for respite, a refusal from CAMHS to even see the child due frankly to funding. Finally, my health and my partner’s fell apart, respite [...]
Read MoreAmelia Riley
Here is a potted history of failures (ongoing) for the last 11 years. Diagnosed with ADHD, ODD, AD, MLD, ASD and very challenging to parent. Sister ‘only’ diagnosed with attachment difficulties but clearly very traumatised from early life and equally challenging. Begged for Respite. All professionals (including therapists, schools, doctors) [...]
Read MoreSarah-Jane
I, along with other adopters facing a failed or ‘disrupted’ adoption, will never get over the total injustice, disrespect and callous actions by our respective Social Services departments and staff that have continuously rocked our integrity and damaged our wellbeing and very souls forever. Adopters are not responsible for the [...]
Read MoreChloe Davis
Summary of feelings about the experience and the frustration Systemic failures in the adoption system and within Local Authorities have a very real impact – emotionally, physically and financially – on entire families, specifically parents and their ability to parent their children into adulthood and, of course, on their adopted [...]
Read MoreLouise Taylor
A summary of our feelings since disrupting. Looking back, we were given poor advice and were not given enough support and direction. During the disruption, social services have lied in their reports, left us to manage our feelings, and have dragged us through the same legal system that abusive parents [...]
Read MoreLouise Mellor
I found life with my son was extremely difficult. He was becoming more violent, physically assaulting my partner as well as hurting emotionally and physically to the other children. He would sell expensive items in the house, break into our locked rooms and go through our belongings. Finding a cash [...]
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